Paper airplane extravaganza!

First off, we have neglected to introduce our most recent Au pair, Jose.  Jose is from Columbia and is in Waterloo doing a masters in economic development.  He is amazing with the kids and they already love him, especially Max.  Max has recently taken to pokemon and Jose has an encyclopedic knowledge of pokemon from his own youth.  This knowledge quickly moved him to hero status in Max's eyes.

Today Max and Jose uncovered a book from Grandma Jean on how to make paper airplanes.  Grandma gave us the book a month or two ago, but I hadn't gotten around to showing it to the kids.  When Max saw it he was ecstatic and started begging Jose to fold airplanes.  They went crazy and before long Max and Darwyn were flying colorful airplanes all over the house!  Thanks Grandma for the awesome gift!

Jose and the kids with all their airplanes (notice more lined up on the couch)

Jose playing tea party with the kids.

Ada jumps

Ada is quickly developing a fondness for her Jolly jumper.  She often jumps in it for an entire hour at a time.  The older kids have a tough time not grabbing the jumper and making her bounce.  She objects loudly if they try and also if anyone tries to take her out before she is ready.  We snapped a quick video (not sure how to rotate it...).

Halloween 2015

Another Happy Halloween in photos

The kids in costume at Friday night's Halloween party.

These next three pictures really amuse me.  Max, who typically shows no concern over getting his hands dirty, was absolutely disgusted by cleaning out the pumpkin.  This may have been because we sold it to him as "pumpkin brains".We have a million pictures of him making very disgusted expressions.  It was tough to choose only three!

Ada's pastime while we carved pumpkins.

Darwyn was not as disgusted by the pumpkin brains, but she also put on a good show:

To continue last years tradition, we used the hole cutter to help with the pumpkin faces.  Here is Max and dad fitting the male stereotype as they get excited about power tools.  Note for next year: the hole cutting set flings pumpkin everywhere.  Put away the clean laundry before you begin using the power tools.

Dar saw dad securing eyeballs to our pumpkin with toothpicks.
She spent another 20 minutes jabbing her pumpkin all over with toothpicks.

The finished pumpkins.  Max's is on the left, Dar's is in the middle
and Mom and dad's is on the right.  See the lit up versions below.

Our home made front Door Skeleton (courtesy of our new aupair, Jose).
Darwyn wanted to name her 'Fancy Nancy'.  Max wanted 'Max the masher'.
The compromise:  'Nancy the Masher'.

Finally, the video tradition:

The power of a hug

Max was upset.  I can't remember why now, but as I recall it had something to do with "natural consequences".  I was sympathetic and offered him a hug (but not a change in the consequences).

Max stared angrily at me and declared "A hug WILL NOT make it better!"

I shrugged my shoulders.  Max paused then added in a small quiet voice "...but you can give me one anyway."

Max is learning reading, arithmetic, and yahtzee

We have noticed a significant improvement in Max's reading and mathematics abilities in recent weeks.

1. He can now read new words by sounding them out all by himself.  Greta watched him painstakingly read an entire children's book to Darwyn when he thought no one was looking.
2. Max was in the bathroom for a long time.  Greta went to check on him.  He was sitting on the toilet, staring at his hands like a pothead.  "Mom: four and four make eight!"
3. I taught him how to play Yahtzee on my smartphone a few weeks ago.  It was a gong show.  He had no idea what he was doing and I had to instruct him constantly.  More recently, we gave him my phone to keep him busy on a long car trip.  From the back seat we heard constant updates: "I got two sixes!", "I'm under water now!" (That means you're behind on your upper bonus), "I got a full house!"
   I'm so proud of him.  His Yahtzee progress is astounding.  Behold:

** Greta's addition: As a side note, Dar is also absorbing reading at an alarming rate.  She is only three so no one has been trying to teach her, but she's been watching Max and now knows half her letters and sounds out of nowhere.  

Ada rolled over today

Oh yeah.  We have another baby.  She rolled over for the first time today.  Somehow we're not waiting with bated breath for Ada to achieve milestones like we perhaps were with previous children.  We still love her though.

Max knows how to dive into water

Medieval Faire 2015

On Saturday we took the kids to the Medieval Fair in Waterloo Park.  It rained heavily in the middle of the day.  We waited it out.  Good call.  Darwyn loved the dresses.  She told every girl she saw that she loved her dress, and that she has an Elsa dress at home.  Max loved the fighting.  He even got to spar with a real knight.  Don't miss the video below!

Max eating roasted meat on the bone with medieval authenticity

Max firing a crossbow

Darwyn's turn

Darwyn, Max, and daddy battering the front gate

Darwyn scaling the castle wall.  She got about halfway up.  Quite impressive for a three-year-old

Max training for his fight

Add caption

You must be this tall to enter

Max made it to the top of the castle

A visit from Angel

Early in July our old au pair Angel came back for a visit.  It was great to see him again.  We all had dinner and caught up.  We tried our best to lure Angel back to Canada. The kids played all the old games they used to play with Angel (including table...a crazy game where one person pretends to be a table and then jumps up and runs away) and we got to play an ultimate game together for old times sake. But alas, we weren't successful at getting Angel to stay. I think we did managed to tug on his heart strings though :)

It was great to see you Angel!  We miss you :)

Dickie Dee Bike

So Gus and I came home from our recent adventures at family camp to discover that our chariot and two bikes had been stolen from our back shed.  Besides being quite upsetting, the lack of a chariot left us with no way to conveniently transport our kids, except our car.  Actually, we had already been facing problems with the chariot being to small for our growing family.

We needed something with capacity for 3 kids.  We considered a bunch of hybrid solutions involving attaching the chariot to the tow bike or having an infant seat on the bike and the chariot behind it, but all the configurations were awkward and all would be rendered useless if we decided to have a fourth child.  But nothing existed that would carry 4 kids and absolutely nothing worked for an infant.  Well almost nothing...

It turns out that a small bike company in Guelph sells cargo trikes reminiscent of the ice cream Dickie Dee Bikes I used to see as a child.   The bike consists of a large cargo box in the front and a bike behind it.  It seats four children and the seats can be flipped up or removed to accommodate other things (such as an infant car seat).  It also comes with a very hefty price tag and a high risk of theft.  So we decided not to get it....

But then our chariot was stolen and we were looking at at least a few hundred to replace it and then it wouldn't even be able to meet our needs...so we changed our minds about the Dickie Dee bike.  Gus brought home the new ride on Tuesday and we've been having lots of fun experimenting.  We took all the kids to swimming lessons in it on Wednesday and today I bought $210 worth of groceries and carried them all home on my bike.  I was wearing my helmet in the store and the cashier kept eyeing it as I was checking out.  Finally she said "you aren't biking with all of this are you?"

"I sure am!"  That felt great.

The official review after a couple of days of use:  The cargo space is awesome and it is very comfortable to ride. It is heavy, but not as bad as you might think given how much weight you are carrying.  It is pretty cumbersome, but I'm not sure how that could have been avoided.  The cargo compartment could really use shocks and it would be helpful to have some easier gears, especially on hills.  I also find it is a little too easy to tip when coming off curbs, something we will have to be very careful about with the kids in there.  The seat belts that come with it are pretty crummy, but I think they can easily be made more effective with a small do it at home hack.   It would also be really useful if we could detach the bike portion from the cargo cart and use it as a "stroller" as well as a bike.  I'm already hatching design plans, but Gus says I'm crazy ;)  Oh well...we can't all be perfect.

Darwyn and mommy on the cargo bike

$210 in groceries

Gus and 3 kids on one bike

Another lego creation by Darwyn

Darwyn recently made another Lego (TM) creation.  Unfortunately, I can no longer remember the back story.  But I did take some photos.  Behold.

Update on Ada

Ada is smiling and flirting like crazy now.  She loves to watch her mobile and she is starting to attempt to grab at toys hanging above her.  She also loves her baths.  She kicks like crazy in the tub and squeals in excitement.

So far Ada has turned out to be an amazing sleeper (knock on wood).  The other night she slept almost 10 hours without waking to eat.  She often sleeps 8 hours and almost always sleeps at least 6 hours.  As far as I know that is almost unheard of in a baby her age.  We are very fortunate.  If you are getting sleep, newborns are no work at all!

Max and Darwyn continue to be very interested in Ada.  They love to cuddle her and talk to her and she rewards them with huge smiles.  Ada is a very strong and tall baby, although not particularly chubby.  She holds her head up well now and really enjoys standing.  Because of her strength, she now has her own superhero persona and declares (narrated by mommy) that she is "hulk baby".  She threatens to spit up on bad guys, and she can suck their weapons away with her super sucking powers.  She also has banshee powers.  Ada is still easy, but she does not care particularly for her car seat.  When she wants out she can really scream.

Max loves to hold Ada.

Dar and Ada playing with Ada's toys

I just like the colour in this one.

Ada hanging out in her camp chair at the river.
Max also has a lovely expression.

Deck roof finally rebuilt

As many of you know, our beloved deck roof needed to come down due to problems caused by it's ridiculous backward-sloping design, which caused ice damming on our shingle roof and hence water leaking into our house in winter.  Since the deck roof is so valuable to us, I decided to take it apart and rebuild it again---this time sloping away from the house.

It was a monumental job.  I won't bore you with the technical details, of which there are many.  Grandpa Lee was kind enough to visit our house for a few days following our trip to Ottawa, during which time we put him to hard labour rebuilding our deck roof.  With his brain and brawn we came up with a new design and did all the heavy, tricky, two-person jobs while he was here.  He left for his home on Monday afternoon.  I've worked full-time since then with one day off.  Finally, late Friday afternoon (yesterday), the project was finished (again).

The old roof offered a huge, panoramic view of our lovely treed back yard, which is why we built it that way.  The new roof blocks a lot of the vertical view but at least it won't wreck our house (I hope).

Here's what the old deck roof looked like, courtesy of the Hopeless Homesteader:

And here is the new roof: